Bending the Boundary (Book 3 of The Silver Chronicles)

They had been lied to. Their entire lives, they had been lied to. From their first day in school, the genetically designed inhabitants who lived Under the Hill in the City had been brainwashed into believing whatever they were told. Not only could they not step even a millimetre closer than six metres from the Boundary that separated them from Over the Hill, they knew they were the only civilization left, both surviving and thriving in the face of hardship.

What they didn’t know was that they had been designed at City Infant not by their parents, but by those determined to perfect the designing of wonderfully compliant, completely obedient beings. Occasionally, though, there was a glitch in the system, and the infertile designed ‘Unders’ found themselves pregnant with a ‘natural’ birth. Usually, a natural had at least one natural parent, born without the tell-tale birthmark between their eyebrows, which had to be either drawn or tattooed on secretly for their protection.

Of course, these naturals weren’t compliant, nor were they obedient. So when Denzin Walker, a natural, was taken and woke up in a wheeled pod as one of the hidden underclass known as Greymen, forced to gratefully serve his City and his Pendrakon through cleaning the sewers, alleys and streets, he fought against it for as long as he could.

When he’d given up hope, though, his friend Chimma – designed as a compliant server – stumbled across him. Together with Denzin’s twin sister Kayda – perfectly designed as a compliant researcher and scientist – they freed him.

After months of recovery, hidden away for safety, Denzin emerged to find that not only his sister but his parents had been taken. Guilt-ridden, he had no choice but to free them as he himself had been freed. And this meant finding a way to get back across that Boundary from the privileged world Over the Hill to the ghetto trapped Under the Hill, without triggering an alert. Of course, Denzin’s natural brain found a way, making himself and Chimma the only ones in the City to ever accomplish this feat.

Under the effects of the gas, they had already impressed on each other – and themselves – that because they loved each other, neither could put themselves at risk for the sake of the other. And through the ‘key words’ which had been programmed into them to make commands permanent, this love bound them to one another as strongly as a steel cord.

With the help of the Gathered – believers in Senda – including the dauntless widow, Gladys Dea, Denzin and Chimma rescued his parents, Rodder and Mathy Walker, followed by a fifteen-year-old girl, Ranna Bule, and Mik Markson, a young father. Surprisingly, neither of these two were from the City. Apparently, the subjugation of those Under the Hill – and, indeed the world beyond the City – was far bigger than they thought. So much bigger.

There was something different about the newest podded ones rescued, though. Instead of the metallic fabric body suits that had Denzin and parents had worn, these ones were covered in Silver – a metallic mesh that bonded itself permanently to their skin, gluing not only their catheters and IV lines in place, but also the breathing masks. A port in their lower back was the only place plug in the connection to their air supply – mixed, of course, with the gas which impressed the controlling messaging into their brains as securely as the Silver was bonded to their skins.

Finding his sister for the first time, Denzin and Chimma could only watch as Kayda – newly Silvered – was marched onto a boat along with a number of podded ones and sailed away.

This sparked their journey – across the Boundary yet again, leaving the City completely this time – in search of Kayda. After training two of the other ‘naturals’ they’d rescued – Mik Markson and Ranna Bule – to take their places, they set off. All through the Sunner they walked, keeping the Water ever to their right as they tried to follow the boat eastwards. Not only did they discover a wild world they hadn’t believed existed beyond the Boundary they had never been allowed to cross, but people – other people, living life in ways they’d never imagined. And living in horrors they’d never dreamed. Silvered Helpers, like Kayda, being kept as slaves to work the engines of Desalination Plants, unable to breath unless they continuously turned the wheel before them. Factory workers, whether Helpers tethered to their podded Sources to provide labour, or podded Flocks tended by Shepherds, treated as no more than machines. Farm labourers, who, unless they worked hard enough and long enough, had to watch their children starve because their Silvered fingers were unable to remove their masks so they could eat.

The farm grew more than food, though – it was also a research facility, breeding the next generation of compliant, obedient slaves. When Chimma was stolen from him, Denzin rescued her, putting yet another layer of control onto the woman he loved. As they ran, he’d used the key words – “remember this” – telling her to “never let go”. And so, she couldn’t. Ever. Whenever she held even his pinkie, there was no way she could release her grip unless someone else did it for her.

Another thing happened at the farm. Chimma had been impregnated with twins. Her body unable to carry them, she later miscarried, plunging them both into unexpected grief.

Meanwhile, Kayda had become nothing but the Helper, servicing Greymen in the Arena somewhere in the City. Nameless, faceless, she discovered that she would never even be allowed to die. She was then Silvered and shipped away to an island penal colony to become the Shepherd, tending her podded Flock of twenty-five. Bonded together first through necessity, and then through love, the Shepherd was determined to care for for her Flock well, despite being forced to Silver them by her own guilty hands.

The Shepherd’s complete life support – not just air, but fluids, nutrition, even her catheter – came only through being ‘tethered’ to one of her Flock on a rotating basis. She had been programmed to obey this command above all others: until her last heartbeat, she was to protect and care for her Flock. Not that she was allowed to protect herself – if her Flock were not at risk, she had to allow anyone to do anything to her they wished. Despite both isolation and repeated abuse, she did everything she could to keep her Flock safe, thus keeping herself alive. Even sleep was no refuge for the Shepherd, for nightmares of one failed rescue attempt by her brother after another made the nights as traumatic as the days.

When the nameless and faceless Shepherd was tethered to a podded one that simply walked out the door, and she had no choice but to follow, leaving the rest of the Flock she loved in the hands of a new, barely-trained shepherd.

Once again, Denzin and Chimma just missed her, crying out out to her from the end of the dock as she was taken even further from them.

The Shepherd now became the Silverer – no longer just nameless, faceless and eternal, but genderless, as Its new nightmare began. However, the questions, incongruities and illogic that the Silverer was forced to ignore refused to lie dormant: having no pronoun besides ‘It’ despite the kind the abuse It had faced; being recognised by her brother while being faceless; knowing all of her families’ names while being eternally nameless herself; being ageless despite knowing her twin’s age; and being only what others said she was, until Senda named her his Child.

DEN013 – her Partner, her Source – Daise was a natural like her brother. They shared the very white, very bright room with a rolling supply of the victims the Senda’s Child was commanded to Silver, pod and permanently tether together. The accusing eyes of all those she had been commanded to violate haunted her dreams night after night.

Then came the day when the UnSilvered Whitecoat, Professor Tafe, used them as a demonstration to his class on what would happen when a tether – their tether – was Silvered. Not just five layers, like the extra sturdy soles of her feet, but six layers, which somehow, unexpectedly, made the tether come alive.Thus Daise and her Shepherd – her Silverer – were bound into an eternal symbiotic existence. Yet this tether surprisingly began to give them something their whole relationship had been denied – a means of communication. In a matter of hours, it connected their nervous systems together. They both felt the tether, and eventually even more.

The Silverer’s next command was to discover something no one else had – how to attach new Silver to old Silver. And her project – victim – was none other than Mik Markson, recently recaptured in the City.

Senda gave the Shepherd the identity she’d been commanded to lose. Mik gave the Silverer the name she’d been commanded to forget. And serendipity gave Kayda the answer she’d been commanded to find. But her shepherd instinct gave her the power to disobey orders to use these discoveries to protect her new Flock of two.

Professor Tafe’s student, young Brow, was commandeered into service as Senda’s Child stepped into her authority, turning her world inside out in the same way her brother turned his world on its head.

Dream after dream of rescue dissolved into nightmares, until, finally, one dream just might – maybe – be true. Did her brother really walk through that door and claim her, taking her, Daise and Mik away? Could she dare trust that this just might really be true? And so she bound her heart with Silver for the moment it would all go wrong, and she would awaken to despair as she obeyed her command to create yet another Silvered pair, conjoined forever, their eyes eternally to inhabit the darkness inside of her.

And as the two journeys collided at last, the prophecy continued to work itself out.

The Designed one that was not designed will be taken and freed. When the Designed clings to his Strength and the Strength empowers Designed, they will free the taken and take the one who sees himself free. But without his Strength, he is lost, and hope melts away. And without the Designed, she is weak and easily defeated. Blessed is the one who aids the Designed and his Strength.